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Doppler radar can be used for more than predicting the weather—it can be used to record migrating birds! Also available in: MPG/WMV (27.55 MB) | QuickTime (22.69 MB) | Audio only (7.78 MB) 
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File Size: 23790440 bytes Duration: 8:25 Released: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 11:00:34 UTC |
Transcript:
Jennifer LaVista: Radar is for the Birds.
Welcome and thanks for listening to the USGS CoreCast. I'm Jennifer LaVista.
We often see doppler radar images when watching the weather forecast on TV, but recent studies show that doppler can be used for more than just deciding if it's going to rain. It can be used to record migrating birds.
To learn more about this project, I called up Rick Sojda. Rick, thanks for joining us.
Rick Sojda: You're welcome Jenn. It has been such a fun project that I'm looking forward to visiting about it.
Jennifer LaVista: Great. Now, how did your team figure out that birds could be detected using weather radar?
Rick Sojda: Well Jenn, scientists, known as radar ornithologists, have sort of been doing this for many years.
The first I used this myself was back in the 80s at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware where we used flight tracking radar to determine where greater snow geese, which were roosting at Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge, were heading out to feed.
And many years later and in discussion with a colleague, by the name of Rob Diehl, who is now professor at University of Southern Mississippi and really one of the world's real experts in this, I might add. It occurred to us that if people can identify birds on weather radar, then why can't we use some artificial intelligence message to do the same?
01:11
Jennifer LaVista: Something similar to weather data collected by the National Weather Service?
Rick Sojda: Yeah, exactly. Radar instruments are designed to locate weather events especially precipitation and severe storms. Fortuitously, for we wildlife biologists, the radar beam also bounces off the birds, bats and insects as well as the rain, snow and clouds.
Jennifer LaVista: So, explain this process to me.
Rick Sojda: In a cooperative project with Ducks Unlimited, we have "goose chasers" really just two of us traveling throughout the Midwest and locate flocks of birds recording their precise latitude and longitude, measure their height above the ground level using a digital rangefinder, and then record the observation time down to the nearest second. We can then download that specific data from NOAA's National Climate Data Center, knowing that it, in fact, has geese in it as we were there and we saw the geese at that particular time and location.
02:03
Dr. Erv Klaas is a retired leader of the USGS' Iowa Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, and he has been working tirelessly as our main goose chaser. He is well suited to the task having studied geese for decades.
Some of data that Erv collected, we've been able to splice radar images together to make a short video that shows lesser snow geese in northeastern South Dakota rising from eating and feeding in corn fields during the afternoon to fly back to roost at Sand Lake National Wildlife Refuge come evening.
Jennifer LaVista: Now, geese especially snows, can gather in great numbers. Tell me what is it like to be out in the field doing this?
Rick Sojda: As far as snow geese are concerned, I worked the area around Freezeout Lake which is Wildlife Management Area managed by the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks on the Rocky Mountain Front. And I'll tell you, same flocks of 10,000 snow geese with a backdrop of 11,000 foot peaks of the Bob Marshall Wilderness on the Rocky Mountain Front and the fabulous wetlands of Freezeout Lake is pretty unforgettable.
03:04
Jennifer LaVista: Oh wow.
Rick Sojda: Erv was working in much flatter country of course around Sand Lake in South Dakota, but they were almost 300,000 birds in the area when he was working there.
Jennifer LaVista: Wait a second, did you say 300,000?
Rick Sojda: Yes, 300,000. It's a major migration staging area for lesser snow geese and it might help if I read some of Erv's field journal notes that illustrate some large numbers of those birds. I found it pretty interesting as I was reading it.
Jennifer LaVista: That'd be great.
Rick Sojda: This is from November 7, last fall, and Erv writes, "I noticed a huge flock of geese in the area several miles to the Southeast so I started my make my way there. A couple hunters stopped to talk and they've told me there were thousands of geese feeding in the field just north in the town of Bath. I drove toward Bath and began to encounter large flocks of geese. I began to time the flights which were nearly continuous and difficult to count the numbers of geese."
Jennifer LaVista: I bet.
Rick Sojda: He continues, "My estimates in the thousands are pure guesses, but if a radar can detect them. It might actually look like brown clutter."
04:05
"I did have time to measure altitude several times and got measurements with the rangefinder between 84 meters and 150 meters, both were around 95 meters. The geese crossing the road over me were coming from a large corn field where thousands more circled and landed."
The second entry is from about a week later. He is still working around Sand Lake National Wildlife Refuge and Erv writes, "Several large flocks came in the East and Southeast. As they passed over my wait point, they are moving relatively slowly in wavy V formations and in a glide pattern."
Jennifer LaVista: Hmmm.
Rick Sojda: "It reminded me of films that are seen from World War II of B-17 bombers heading the bomb Germany with the full moon rising in the east and the sky pink in the west in the setting sun, this was quite a scene.
At dark, I drove around to the northside of the section. Wind was in the south and so I was on the downwind side of the flock. Still, thousands of geese were in the field and then it hit me. The odor of ammonia and goose feces from several days of depositing from all those geese."
05:04
Rick Sojda: "It was like walking into a hot confined building in a turkey farm."
Jennifer LaVista: Oh my goodness.
[Laughter]
Rick Sojda: It's a pretty interesting observation rest assured in the process of collecting all the quantitative data too.
Jennifer LaVista: [Laughter]. Thanks for sharing that. Tell me about some of the findings so far.
Rick Sojda: Oh I'm really fortunate Jenn to be working with a grad student in computer science in Montana State University, that's where my office is located. A new program software called Machine Learning that can in fact learn what birds look like in a weather radar. The student, Reggie Mead, has been quite successful on this Machine Learning quest and is typically about 90% accurate in identifying birds with weather radar data so far and we're pretty pleased with that.
Jennifer LaVista: What are you doing with all these?
Rick Sojda: Over next phases of project, we will begin to sort through years of weather radar digital images and identify when were geese are in the air and you have to remember that that's probably millions of scenes but actually because each time one of these weather radar slips around all of that information is archived and there are just 150 stations across the country and they have been doing it for years.
06:05
Jennifer LaVista: Wow.
Rick Sojda: Once we do that, we'll have the task of making accurate maps of where birds migrate that is delineating their sort of north to south movements towards the wintering grounds in the fall and then the returns flights to the north to breathe come spring. Such migration paths change over time recourse, that's one of the things that we're interested in of course, and is habitat is lost through urban development, is climate change affects wetlands and of course the goose habitats and as agriculture cropping patterns change all those things affect where the geese are going to be migrating.
Jennifer LaVista: Where can listeners follow this project?
Rick Sojda: There are two websites that are of interest in particular. First if you go to the site of the Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center which is the center that I work for. If you just click on the science feature about birds and weather radar, to follow some of the specifics of my work, you can go from there. I posted some videos there too of radar images of snow geese returning to roost at Sand Lake National Wildlife Refuge as the one I mentioned earlier.
07:00
Jennifer LaVista: Great.
Rick Sojda: There is some actual video of snow goose flocks there that people can watch too.
Second, another website is there are several of us across the country working in radar ornithology in USGS and other places and Janet Ruth of our Fort Collins Science Center maintains a website for our collaborative efforts. It's really a great source for learning about what's happening in this field and this sort of getting an introduction to radar ornithology.
Jennifer LaVista: What do you expect to study in the future?
Rick Sojda: This project so far has been funded by the U.S. Department of Interiors Geological Survey and Fish and Wildlife Services as well as the National Renewable Energy Lab of the Department of Energy. They have a collective interest in providing up-to-date information on bird migration corridors to wind energy developers to help minimize the impact on birds from wind turbines. So part of our next work will be to provide associated decision support tools that utilize this radar and bird migration corridor information and sort of part of answering your question, it does not make sense to erect 125 wind turbines right here.
08:03
Jennifer LaVista: Hmmm...That's fascinating.
Rick is there anything else you'd like to add?
Rick Sojda: Well, just thanks for taking the time to visit about it and I'm always happy to talk to folks about the project because it's pretty exciting for us.
Jennifer LaVista: Well, thanks so much Rick. It really has been fun.
Rick Sojda: You're welcome.
Jennifer LaVista: CoreCast is product of the U.S. Geological Survey Department of the Interior. I'm Jennifer LaVista.
[Exit Music]
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